Third time lucky

Today, I was a guest at my parents' third wedding. I was a four-month-old foetus when my mother first married my father. I, of course, remember nothing of the occasion - though my dear, dead grandma, May Mole, told me that my mother disgraced herself at the reception by accidentally setting fire to her wedding veil while attempting to light a Capstan with a broken Swan Vesta match.

My father put the blaze out with a bowl of cling peaches in juice, snatched from the buffet. In the resulting confusion, Grandma's 75 home-stuffed vol-au-vents (one per guest) were despoiled. Although only a foetus, I feel sure that this unsavoury incident made me into a non-smoker, with an aversion to swans.

Today's ceremony was conducted at County Hall, the administrative nerve centre of Leicestershire. It was somewhat disconcerting to look up from the baggy faces of my lovelorn parents pledging their vows, to see a County Hall apparatchik photocopying what appeared to be fixed-penalty forms in an adjacent office. If I ever marry again, I will make sure that the setting is suitably romantic. Rutland Water at sunset is said to be a breathtaking sight, though in the summer, midges might present a problem.

The reception took place in the One-Stop Centre function room on a nearby council estate. As we guests queued up to offer our congratulations to the bride and groom, we were forced to rub shoulders with benefits claimants, young offenders and a pensioners' ping-pong group. I'm the most liberal and democratic of men, but surely a hotel would have been more suitable?

The musical entertainment was provided by Alan Clarke and his folk group, The Shanty Men, who wore matching Aran sweaters and sang about herrings. I was glad when one of them, Abbo Palmer, broke off and announced that Clarke was 50 that day. Clarke looked horror-struck and Pamela Pigg, his present amour, said to me, "The bloody liar, he told me he was 37-and-a-half."

My father stood up and made a speech about the "happiest day of his life" - his voice was blurry with sentimental tears. Unfortunately he was talking about something Ian Botham did 20 years ago at Headingley.